


Eudaimonia

by Eristastic



Series: Fem&Blood [2]
Category: Flesh & Blood - Matsuoka Natsuki
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Character Study, F/F, Philosophy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:21:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28504398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eristastic/pseuds/Eristastic
Summary: (Calm down. You don’t make good decisions when you’re on edge. Calm down. So she’s a wolf — you just have to be the hunter. Be patient.)A guide on how to handle having your most precious girl taken from you by a wild wolfish pirate.
Relationships: Kaito Tougo/Geoffrey Rockford, Kaito Tougo/Kazuya Morisaki
Series: Fem&Blood [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2087952
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Eudaimonia

**Author's Note:**

> No one's going to read this but on the off-chance f&b ever gets an english release and it gets popular, I want it known that I was here first.
> 
> I've done more work on this au since and ironed out some of the wrinkles that show up here (names, how Alonso would work, the use of in-text Spanish, how the plot would work in the first place, how the hell it would end) but it's been a hard year and I'm not rewriting this one.
> 
> For my own peace of mind: Kaito's 19 in this one and trans; Kazuya is similarly 19 and makes a different decision in book 17. I thought that all the historical research and Bible studies necessary to write f&b fic weren't hard enough and decided to challenge myself with working out how this au would work, apparently.
> 
> Don't talk to me about making famed 16thc playwright Christopher Marlowe trans. F&b Kit is enough of Matsuoka's oc that I didn't feel I was doing it to the actual historical figure, and anyway, 'Kitty' was too good to pass up.

Kazuya hadn’t been there for the initial reunion. She’d seen Kaito off, waited with her heart in her mouth, and realised how much of a bitter aftertaste that left when Kaito came back from the prison looking flushed with happiness.

If there had still been room to delude herself back then, it had crumbled away very quickly, leaving her with only hateful reality to cling to. The last of it fell from under her feet when she stood in the Cecils’ drawing room, waiting with clenched fists for her Kaito to come back to her, and had seen Geoffrey Rockford for the first time. She was the kind of woman who with her mere presence demanded the attention of everyone in the room, but she had Kazuya’s only in fragments: her possessive hand on Kaito’s waist, her proprietary stroke of Kaito’s hair, her predatory eyes when she looked at Kaito. It was a betrayal that Nigel never once called her out on it, because Kazuya had been starting to like the sombre older woman, and a betrayal it stayed as they had their little reunion, acting so friendly with each other. When Robert laughingly remarked on how well they all got along, Kazuya couldn’t help but agree; she was rooted to the spot watching her best friend, her most precious girl, in the jaws of a wolf.

( _Thank god I came. Thank god._ )

When Kaito turned to her, eyes bright and smiling, to introduce her, she stepped forwards with the sweetest smile on her lips and the vilest loathing in her heart.

“My name’s Kazuya,” she said in her gentlest voice. “It’s such a pleasure to finally meet you.”

She didn’t hear Geoffrey’s reply. Honestly, she wasn’t listening: her mind was full to the brim of whirring plans to rid Kaito of this beast who had marked her.

If there was one thing she could give the woman, however, it was that her crew adored her. Perhaps it was only natural, since they hadn’t seen her for months and must have feared she’d die, but half were close to tears when she stepped on the deck of her ship under the light of flickering lamps that made her hair shine gold. The other half joined them when she gave her speech. She spoke well, probably: Kazuya didn’t really pay attention. She stuck close to Nigel, watching everyone’s reactions instead.

( _It_ _’s not going to be easy, but I knew that when I came through the tunnel, so I won’t dwell on it. I’ve done harder things._ )

But even she was taken aback when Geoffrey publicly claimed Kaito with a kiss on front of everyone. Stunned, Kazuya watched the mixture of laughter and mild protests from the crew, the more flustered protests from Kaito herself, the roguish grin on Geoffrey’s face that Kazuya wanted to punch off — and then the first-mate called for order beside her, and the second-mate yelled out coarse orders, and the crew began to move. Their darling captain must have come to the end of her strength: supported by Kaito, she went below deck, and Kazuya had to remember how to breathe.

( _Calm down. You don_ _’t make good decisions when you’re on edge. Calm down. So she’s a wolf — you just have to be the hunter. Be patient._ )

In the organised chaos of sailors moving around her like currents in water, she rallied her forces and looked up at Nigel, asking in her most diffident tone, “Is there anything I can do?”

Nigel smiled down at her in a sisterly way. “Don’t worry about it for now: we’ll get you trained up soon, when we’re not on a rescue mission. Just try not to get in the way,” she said, but kindly, and turned away to terrorise the crew.

Kazuya didn’t really know what to do then. Her mind was still in a state of unrest: she had to make her plans, but she didn’t know the environment well enough to work it the way she wanted, and it wasn’t easy to ground herself in a totally new world, anyway. She wanted to get back to Plymouth. There, she could get started on something — and it was cleaner than London, which helped.

Leaning back against wooden beams, she watched everyone move in the low light and tried to take it in.

( _I can't believe I_ _’m here, but it’s worth it: it’s all worth it if I can save her and bring her back to me. I can put up with anything as long as she comes back to me._ )

“You’re deep in thought, my Clio.”

Kazuya looked up, perplexed, to see Kitty watching her knowingly, as if she knew anything.

“What did you call me?”

“Clio,” Kitty said with a grin, hiding in the shadow of overhang from the upper deck. “The muse of history — fitting for you, I thought, but perhaps I should call you my Melpomene.”

“I haven’t brushed up on my Greek muses,” Kazuya said in a voice that hopefully didn’t betray how pretentious she thought Kitty was and how disappointed she was to feel that way about a celebrated literary figure.

“The muse of tragedy,” Kitty enlightened her. “Your expression just now would have suited any tragic heroine, did you know? I should get you to act for me one of these days too.”

“I think you’re reading too much into it.” Kazuya laughed. “I’m just adjusting. I didn’t think,” she said, picking her words carefully as she followed the head of one sailor around the deck, “that everyone would be so accepting. Of their relationship, I mean.”

To be frank, she’d rather been counting on period-appropriate homophobia to save her, and was put out that it hadn’t.

“Well, I think they’re all used to their captain’s proclivities by now,” Kitty said airily, ducking behind a wooden column to avoid the second-mate’s gaze. “And I think, though they might not know it, they recognise in those two the platonic ideal of love.”

Kazuya looked at her and tried not to let disgust show on her face. “Do you think so?”

“I do. Are you familiar with Plato’s thoughts on achieving eudaimonia?”

“Do you mean the forms?”

Kitty’s eyes lit up. “A learned woman! But no, I don’t mean the forms specifically. One of his principles designed to guide man towards fulfilment was to let your lover change you. The idea was that love isn’t supposed to be contented stagnation, but a constant push for improvement, and lovers should be committed to helping the other improve.”

“And you think they realise that ideal?” Kazuya asked in a bored voice.

“I do. You would too, if you’d seen them when they first met.”

( _I should have been there. I could have stopped it all._ )

Discontent roiled in her chest: to suppress it, she appealed to Kitty’s teacherly nature (or, less charitably, her desire to preach). “I thought Plato said something else about love. Wasn’t there a dialogue on it?”

“The _Symposium_ ,” Kitty agreed, just audible over the creaking wood and various exclamations from the crew as they continued their supposedly silent progress down the Thames. “A particularly good dialogue, but I don’t know how well it applies to them.”

“I couldn’t say.”

“It does, however, apply to me.”

“Ah.”

“Love is contemplation,” Kitty said, her tone becoming steadily loftier. “Love is not idealisation or demonisation, but the contemplation and inspiration that fills the world with fascination — of beauty, real beauty. Love inspires,” she concluded dreamily. “And my Alcibiades inspires me.”

It took Kazuya a good few seconds to fully process what she’d just heard. “Do you mean Nigel?”

“I do.”

“Shall I tell her you called her that?”

“You should do just what you like, my Clio, my muse of history and future both, but,” —her voice took on a new tone, new enough that Kazuya looked down through the shadows at her— “what I mean to say is that there are many kinds of love. Take my darling Daphne,” she said in a reference that thankfully went over Kazuya’s head. “Hers is a love founded in virtue and principle, something like what the Stoics idolised. How she ended up with a hedonist, I’ll never understand, but it is what it is. Her love is a world apart from mine, and another world apart from Geoffrey’s. There are as many ways to love as there are people on this earth.”

Kazuya cocked her head to the side in a display of innocent and faked curiosity. “Do you think so?”

“I do. Shall I tell you another? You’ll have to forgive me: I’m a poet at heart, and watching you these past days, I just can’t get these lines out of my head.”

Misgivings reared in Kazuya’s heart. She’d assumed this was a pep talk to convince her to accept Geoffrey’s unacceptable behaviour, but doubts troubled her now. She’d been happy assuming she knew more than this woman: she’d been happy to discard her counsel as a relic of the past, but those eyes pierced her.

“It’s something I read a while ago,” Kitty said. “Let me see if I remember.

‘He’s equal with the Gods, that man

Who sits across from you,

Face to face, close enough, to sip

Your voice’s sweetness,

‘And what excites my mind,

Your laughter, glittering. So,

When I see you, for a moment,

My voice goes,

‘My tongue freezes. Fire,

Delicate fire, in the flesh.

Blind, stunned, the sound

Of thunder, in my ears.

‘Shivering with sweat, cold

Tremors over the skin,

I turn the colour of dead grass,

And I’m an inch from dying.’”

She finished without ceremony. On the deck in front of them, laughter had erupted at something presumably funny, and was quickly stifled by heavy shushing.

“That’s pretty,” Kazuya said, choking on emotion she wouldn’t show. “Who’s it by?”

“Sappho. She has another fragment that I’ve always liked to think is a sort of mirror image of this one, but it’s about the speaker begging Aphrodite to make her beloved fall in love with her and Aphrodite takes it with very motherly exasperation. She does agree, though. I read it as tongue-in-cheek: I like that the same poet can consider unrequited love through both a sympathetic and mocking lens. It speaks to the complexity of the love itself, I’ve always thought. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. My proud Daphne has evaded me for longer than I’d like.”

Kazuya pushed out a laugh. “Was all of that just to tell me how hopeless your love life is?”

“I don’t know: was it?” She smiled wryly. “I think I just wanted to remind you that both sides exist. You can trust me: I give good advice, even if I won’t take it myself.”

“Then thank you, though I’m still not sure what you mean. I’ll have to think about it, I guess.”

“Do,” she said, and probably would have tried to push her luck even further then if a hoarse roar hadn’t cut into their conversation: very almost flinching, Kazuya turned to see the second-mate drag the protesting Kitty out of the shadows by her collar, berating her for skiving.

( _Serves you right for sticking your nose where it doesn_ _’t belong. Your failed crush has nothing to do with me._ )

Kazuya watched them go, thinking. The poem wasn’t what stuck with her: she wasn’t new to pain. She’d felt this every time she’d sought temporary refuge in music and felt like every song came just close enough to expressing the enormity of what she felt without ever fitting perfectly. No one could really understand what she felt: not rockstars and not Classical Greek poets. No one could understand her attachment to Kaito. Even she struggled sometimes.

( _But it_ _’s what she said about lovers changing each other. Kaito’s changed. I thought that when she came back to me too: she’s not the same as when she was only mine. If that bitch has corrupted her, I’ll crush her._ )

Crushing was more than Geoffrey deserved. Fear shuddered inside Kazuya’s chest now: she remembered the sight of jaws closing around her bright girl, a monster salivating over her every move, and she couldn’t not act.

Spotting Nigel, she slipped through the throng of moving bodies, towards her, and stood by her, looking meek, until she’d finished clipping cold orders at a crew member.

“I saw Kitty was bothering you,” she said. “Don’t worry about her: she says a lot and most of it means nothing.”

“She called you her Alcibiades and her proud Daphne.”

An expression of total repulsion soured Nigel’s face. “Did she.”

“I was thinking I should go downstairs and see if I can help there: I can clean, at least.”

“That’s a good idea,” Nigel said, but it was clear her attention was already elsewhere on the darkened deck. Absently, she patted Kazuya’s head and said, “You do that. Kaito will know what you can do.”

“Yes, sir!” Kazuya chirruped cheerfully and turned away, heading below deck. The second she’d turned from Nigel, her angelic smile had twisted, just a little. Just enough that she could feel it.

( _You might have her, but I_ _’m not letting you off that easily. If you think I’m going to retreat into the wings you don’t know the first thing about me._ )

It wasn’t an exaggeration to say she’d spent her whole life chasing Kaito’s light. Since they were children, she had needed to be everything to that bright-eyed girl whose gaze always wandered, and no time-slip, no bout of tuberculosis, and no egocentric pirate captain was going to get in her way. Where there was a wolf, there would be a hunter — and, like a hunter, she knew how to bide her time. She was not the pathetic voice of a poet begging a god to give her her love, and she would not let the sight of Kaito bring her close to death.

Something inside her had changed inexorably during those terrible months in which she’d thought she’d lost Kaito forever and she felt it now, walking through the gloomy corridor of a ship, centuries before she would be born. Like a glitching video, she still worked, but she was just wrong enough that no one could watch her and be comfortable.

( _As if I care. I only need Kaito._ )

It was worth it. It was all worth it. It was fine.

( _I just need to get that bitch away from her._ )

Finding the captain’s cabin, she was about to knock on the door (loudly, so she could come in and interrupt everything), but just before her knuckles could rap on the rough wood, she stopped dead. The door was open a crack, and from that crack had come the sound of someone singing before they’d abruptly cut themselves off.

Not just someone. Kaito.

( _But Kaito doesn_ _’t sing. She’s been self-conscious of it ever since her voice changed._ )

There was the sound of laughter: bright, bubbly and nervous, and something in Kazuya’s chest clenched to hear the laugh of the girl she loved more than anyone, given to someone else.

“I can’t,” Kaito was saying, laughter still dripping from her voice. “I can’t, I take it back—”

“You can’t say that when you’re the one who brought it up, lass,” that irritating woman said, her voice just as smiling. “Go on: sing it for me.”

“It was just this film — films are like plays, don’t worry about it — and the lead sung it there and I just thought he was so like you, that’s all.”

“A handsome devil, was he?”

“Incorrigible and big-headed and a terrible flirt.”

Geoffrey made a sound of mock injury while, privately, Kazuya applauded.

“But bold,” Kaito finished, and there was something so tender in her voice that it took all the breath from Kazuya’s lungs. “Bold, and sweet, and with the kind of smile that makes you feel like you’re the only one who matters in the whole wide world.”

Another laugh. “Should I be jealous?”

“No. I only thought about you the whole time.”

“Then sing it for me.”

“You’ll laugh.”

“You know I won’t. Go on, love.”

Kazuya held her breath. Keenly she felt the urge to slam the door open and shatter the atmosphere into a million pieces that they’d never get back if she had any say in the matter, but the desire to hear Kaito sing won out.

And, after a minute or so of sounds she couldn’t place, she was rewarded.

Kaito took a breath. In a soft but steady and infinitely sweet voice, she sang, “ _You're just too good to be true; can_ _’t take my eyes off you. You’d be like heaven to touch: I wanna hold you so much_.” There was the sound of someone moving, and a giggle, but she picked it up again, a little stronger this time. “ _At long last love has arrived, and I thank god I_ _’m alive — you’re just too good to be true, can’t take my eyes off of you_.”

Kazuya’s hands were shaking: she had to dig her nails into the palms. She knew it would hurt. She knew, but nothing on heaven or earth could have stopped her from taking a cautious step and peering through the crack then.

The cabin was dim, lit by very few candles, but there on the bunk sat Kaito, a golden head resting on her thighs, and she was bending down, brushing her own hair behind an ear — it burnt like fire in the candlelight. There was a smile on her lips as she looked down at the woman looking back up at her. Their eyes locked, she lowered a hand to stroke some of that golden hair, and murmured, in the barest hint of a tune, “ _I love you, baby — and if it_ _’s quite alright, I need you, baby, to warm a lonely night. I love you, baby. Trust in me when I say: oh pretty baby, don’t bring me down, I pray_.”

The smile was melting into something like liquid love on her face. It was there, plain for all to see. She wasn’t a reserved girl, and she gave this unselfishly: generous to a fault, she smiled like she’d found what she’d been looking for her whole life and knew it wouldn’t leave.

“ _Oh, pretty baby,_ ” she sang with such adoration that it hurt to hear, “ _now that I found you, stay, and let me love you, baby. Let me love you_.”

The words trailed off, the words fading into the air. A hand reached up to the back of Kaito’s neck and guided her down, until their eyes weren’t the only things that were locked.

Kazuya really had to be a masochist. Wrenching herself back, away from that hateful sight, she walked away stiffly, her heart aching so badly she thought it might refuse to beat.

( _I_ _’ll kill her. I’ll end her, I’ll make her regret the day she ever got her hands on Kaito, I’ll ruin her life, I’ll_ end _her. Kaito shouldn_ _’t be looking at anyone else like that: I’ll…_ )

Her steps faltered in some unremarkable part of the ship. Holding a hand to her chest, she struggled to breathe, but anger wasn’t the only thing she felt. It thrived inside her, like it always did, but though her mind was inundated with thoughts of how she would hunt Geoffrey to the ends of the earth for this, her heart couldn’t stay a hunter’s. In the end, she was a girl in love, and though she felt like ripping the ship apart plank by plank because of what she’d seen, a part of her remembered only how happy Kaito had looked.

Kaito had never looked like that back home.

( _I could make her that happy too. Fuck you. It doesn_ _’t have to be that hag._ )

But she felt a little smug too (just a little) to know that Kitty had been wrong about her: Kaito’s glittering laughter did not make her feel inches from death. It calmed her soul, just enough that she could go back up on deck and cheerfully tell the first-mate that the captain was shirking her responsibilities and probably needed a good telling off.

**Author's Note:**

> Sappho 31 translation: A.S. Kline (2005)


End file.
